


The Sokovia Accords

by jemmasimmns (laurellance)



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-26 12:18:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6238426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurellance/pseuds/jemmasimmns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s the public that demands it first. It’s the destruction of New York, Washington, and now, Sokovia. Because if anything, the public’s more enraged than ever- now it’s not just American Soil, it’s goddamn European Soil, and who knows where else the Avengers will destroy. The skeptics gain more power, because more people are speaking out and it’s a world wide reaction.</p><p>It’s not quite as simple as a literal foreign alien coming onto earth anymore, no, now it’s where-did-nick-furys-assassin-go, it’s the CIA cover being blown, HYDRA, , and it’s the obliteration of a random city in Eastern Europe. </p><p>It’s a chain effect; one, two, three and the dominos keep on falling and falling and building up and suddenly the public explodes, because this is one step too far. </p><p>The press run paper after paper, questioning the Avengers, digging up their pasts to the point where literal biographies are formed from just the archives alone, and suddenly they’re all out of places to run to, to go to. </p><p>It’s the HYDRA files gathering dust, it’s the leaked SHIELD information, but it’s Sokovia that seals their fates. </p><p>(Or, the build up to Captain America: Civil War)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. cat and mouse

Sam Wilson stops by Pym Tech one day. It sends old Hank sputtering, because why are the goddamn Avengers coming by, he’s been done with SHIELD for decades, and _god-fucking-dammit_ , what did they want?

He wants to talk to Scott, Sam had told Hope. He’s accompanied by Natasha, and she stays behind him, reading Hope’s body language. Hope denies knowing the whereabouts of Scott, but she grips the handle of her cup a little too tight, and when they walk out of the CEO Office, they know exactly where to find Scott Lang.

It’s easy, Nat tells Sam. She’s protective of him, and an unspoken _the way I care for Clint_ whispers in the distance.

They don’t find Lang at first, no Lang turns out to be a hell of a weasel to catch. No registered addresses, a criminal record, jail time, and a tendency to want to fix the wrong. The SHIELD records don’t help them, but the local news does. Lang has an ex-wife, and a child between the two of them.

For the next few weeks, Nat tracks the wife. She’s re-married, and the daughter is a pleasant surprise. Makes up many ‘tall tales’ regarding the Avengers, that her dad fought a Avenger and one. Called the dad a superhero, even if she complains that she’s not been able to see her dad or ‘miss hope’ recently. Nat wonders why.

The child was even easier to track. Cassie Lang, daughter of ex-con Scott Lang and Margaret ‘Maggie’ Lang; the school reports had talked about the girl’s admiration for her father, her never ending adoration of the reported Ant-Man.

Nat finds it almost amusing at first: it was all too easy. She indulges Clint onto it, and Clint just shakes his head in amusement. _It’s a easy job_ , he tells her, but she knows that by the next time they talk about this, he would have found more information. (She’ll never formally admit it, but Clint knows herself just as well as she does, and she’s grateful for that; he’s been one of the only constants she’s had for a while now, and she’s been getting tired of being called Francis Barton’s hot-headed girlfriend.)

He comes back with intel regarding Hank Pym a few days later. It’s all memory he claims, only because ants have eaten away at his clothes and infested all his things. But it’s intel nonetheless, and she has to stop herself from smiling too much. There’s always a few men around; no consistent patterns, but they don’t live in the house. They’re there, always there, but the only one who stays there the full time is Hank; the daughter lives somewhere else.

He drops a flash drive in her pocket when he hugs her, because it’s a game of cat and mouse now, and the ants were no coincidence.

She registers in a hotel a few towns over under the name ‘Natalia Barton.’ Clint laughs at it when he hears it, until he realises that he is Francis Barton, and that they were supposedly husband and wife. The flash drive’s a series of shots from the Pym house; there’s tracks of what appears to be a giant ant, disappearing footsteps that lead to the basement, and a glimpse of a face. It’s a man with dark hair, and he and _Hope Van Dyne_ are in a bedroom having sex. The signs are there, the tussled clothes scattered on the floor, the sense of urgency in whatever the she is doing, and Clint is by her side gulping down Russian Vodka. “What, you didn’t enjoy watching it?” She comments, while watching the audio less video of it; and she has to admit, Hope Van Dyne is better from this perspective. Much more relaxed, comfortable, _intimate_.

Clint finishes the Vodka in no time flat; that, he gingerly admits, was one of the most disturbing things he’d ever had to suffer through. He doesn’t seem to complain when she does to the same to him, in fact, she makes it even better for the man and ant hidden in the shadows of the room. Clint and Nat find themselves a second bottle of Vodka at their door the next day, a ‘gift’ from an anonymous donor. On the bottle, is a location, and a date three days from then.

Cat and Mouse, it seemed, was not Scott Lang’s specialty. (Hank Pym, they notice, takes a shot of whiskey after a phone call, and Hope Van Dyne takes the day off. Interesting.)

All Nat tells Sam is that she and Clint have it under control, and it seems that the embarrassment he still had regarding this con-ant-whatever lingered.

Although, it didn't stop her from retelling Clint exactly what had happened to warrant the said embarrassment all over again.

-

“The Avengers are looking for me.” Scott doesn't seem to be able to register the shock of it, while Hank grips his cup with a death grip.

“Hope, could you repeat it again? The story.” Hank's breathing is controlled, his eyes furious, and he looks as if he is about to murder someone.

“Sam Wilson stopped by my office with the Black Widow and asked me where Scott was. That was it, dad.” Hope’s remarkably calm, but she's towering over Scott like a protective cover.

“Was there any indication that there was Stark involvement? Who else entered the building? What car did they leave from? What else did they do?” Hank's rattling off questions like there's no tomorrow, and the tension in the room is so thick that Scott's sure he needs to leave.

“Scott, I'll call Maggie to tell her that you're gonna be busy for a while, and keep a low profile.” Hope’s gripping the back of his chair tightly. “I mean it, Scott. Keep a low profile, and tell Luis and the others to do it as well, now would not be a right time to attract more attention than necessary.”

They spend the next few days on edge, and it's a bit of a wonder that no one really catches on. You could hardly ever tell with Hank, as far as behaviour went he was just more paranoid than usual. Hope was more snappy, stressed, and one day she enters his current room and kisses him deeply.

She’s already only half dressed; all she has on is a tank top, shorts, and underwear covered with a robe. She's unbuttoning his clothes, and Scott’s forgotten to close the window, but no one would care. He returns her kiss, and the robe falls to the floor, Hope’s hair flopping all over her face as she tugs his shirt off.

Her tank top gets thrown onto the floor, and Scott's shirt follows in reckless abandon. Scott is riding her hard, and she doesn't quite care anymore. It's all or nothing in this moment, and it's so _urgent_ , so important. Because Scott's tired of being cooped up in the house, and the paranoia Hope feels isn't fucking healthy and it's spontaneous, rash, and so many other things but this moment? This moment was theirs. It was entirely theirs. (Hank pretends that he doesn't know what his daughter and Scott were doing in the guest room. But they could have at least been quieter.)

(The first thing Clint Barton does when they're asleep is stop by the local alcohol store. Francis Barton buys a bottle of Stolnaya Vodka, because now he can't get the image of Scott Lang and Hope Van Dyne screwing each other senseless. Recorded too.)

-

The place Lang suggests is the fucking police station. Clint had been eyeing the building; lots of exits and entrances. Too open, too suspicious of a place. Too many shadows, and given the talent Lang had with insects.. “Nat, this looks like a trap.”

Nat says nothing, checking the door for bugs of any kind. “The building is surprising clean so far.” The understood threat was to keep their eyes open for anything.

They're led down a hallway, to a office. The lights weren't on, but the trail of ants that indicated directions had made it pretty clear. “It’d be nice if I could kill one of them,” Clint mutters as a passing comment to Nat, while eyeing the trail of insects directing their locations.

The ants stop at a office at the end of the hall. Hope Van Dyne sits on the desk, fully dressed- Clint notes with relief, calm and controlled. The same dark haired male stands next to her and raises his eyebrows at them. The ants surrounding them increases in number.

“Is there a particular reason for you looking for Scott? I don't seem to recall the Avengers holding auditions.” Hope inquiries, passive yet maintaining control. The male, Scott, says nothing.

“Funny, I thought you said a few days ago you didn't know him.” Nat would have expected Scott Lang to be _more_. He was smaller than she expected, but then again, he reminded her of Clint.

“Lang, how much did you enjoy the sex? Nice, wasn't it? Not quite as vocal as you and Van Dyne, but Clint didn't think so.” Nat watches as Lang winces, and Van Dyne cuts him off.

“You said nothing of importance happened!” She hisses, upset with him.

“It wasn't important, they just ended up having sex.” Lang attempts to placate her, failing.

“Clint Barton has a recording of us having _sex_ , Scott. Do you have any idea what would have happened if it- How would you not realise the importance of it, of them having a recording-”

“I didn't know they had recorded it! I didn't even know they were there that night we had it-”

“Only Clint Barton was there! Did you not hear what she said- she implied **Clint Barton** was the one who witnessed it-”

“Clint Barton saw us having sex.”

“Scott, Cassie will _not_ hear about a damn Avenger saw her father having sex-”

“I wasn't planning on doing it!”

“You were implying it.”

Lang runs his hand through his hair. “Do you mind deleting that recording please?” He aims the question at Natasha, and Clint just grimaces. _Good luck with that_.

“I will on one condition: are you or are you not the ant-man thing that beat up Sam?” Nat already knows the answer, she just needs verbal confirmation.

“That was him?” Clint’s rather amused, before admitting. “I would have expected something more impressive.”

“Like you?” Hope questions with annoyance. “Now, would you two please get off Scott’s case?” The ants are getting closer and it appears that Van Dyne can control the ants as well. (Well crap.)

“We just need him to talk to Sam Wilson. That's all.” There are ants crawling up Nat’s legs, and even she has to admit that they weren't the most comfortable of things to endure.

“.. and?” Nat was growing very fond of Hope Van Dyne, despite the small insects crawling up her body.

“We’ll delete the damn clip.” Clint finishes, and the ants back off.

Hope smiles. “Thank you; now, are we done here?”

-

The first thing Clint does when they get back to the hotel is shower and pull out a bottle of Whiskey. “Nat, do you want some?” He offers her a bottle, and they fall back to their habits now: Clint talking, and Nat listening. She declines the bottle.

“The press has been calling for registration. Calling for, what was it, the Sokovia Accords? Ross has been campaigning hard for it, since the beginning. Now it looks like he’s got a bigger audience now,” Clint winces at the memory of Pietro, but continues anyway. “It’s a mess.”

Nat knows, but she has a feeling that there’s more to it. “What else?”

“I’ve been looking into Ross, he’s asking about The Winter Soldier, Hulk’s disappearance,” Clint subconsciously runs his fingers through his hair, stress habit, “Everything.”

Clint pauses, hesitates. “He brought up one day, how in this area a factory disappeared. Into thin air, and that there were reports of abnormalities, like enlarged ants.”

“Ross only mentioned it in passing, but he’s been campaigning hard for registration. _Protection for the People_ he calls it, and Stark’s out of his damn mind supporting it.” Clint takes another sip of the Vodka, relishing in the bitterness of it. “Don’t blame Stark, but he’s got military backing too.”

It’s a different kind of tension in the room. Not the romantic kind, but the kind that speaks of thousands of unsaid things: the fact that Nat can see it being entirely possible, the implication that Clint would do this best to oppose it.

Clint takes another sip of Vodka, and offers her the rest of the bottle. “Take it, Nat.” He leaves, and the bottle is finished by the time the sun rises.


	2. plot rising;

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Asset watches, and everyone goes their separate ways.

“Sam, we found him.” They’re at a local diner, and Nat’s already calculated twenty ways to escape from this small food joint. The windows are open, The door is easy to break off, and she’s not even really trying. 

“Our lead was true?”

-

Five blocks away, the asset watches. The Asset,  _ Bucky _ he corrects, watches as Sam Wilson, code name The Falcon, and Natalia Romanova discuss. The open windows and flimsy glass of their current location make killing them easier, but that is not his current objective. 

He has no current objective; so he follows the friends of the man on the bridge. Natalia Romanova had, with Clinton Francis Barton, the Hawkeye, held a meeting with Scott Edward Harris Lang and Hope Van Dyne. Lang and Van Dyne appeared to be in control of something that controlled  _ ants _ , a variant of the Pym Particle it seemed. 

The Asset had watched the meeting with disinterest. Lang and Van Dyne had appeared to have a lovers spat in the middle of negotiations, and Barton and Romanova had watched with interest. 

However, even if they were unprofessional, untrained, and emotionally open, they held a power he had only heard of. The Pym Particle, the ability to ‘shrink’ and change size at will, only referenced in the SHIELD archives. No experiments whatsoever, just the yearnings and reflections of men long dead. The ability to  _ shrink _ , however impressive as it had been, far too late for HYDRA to experiment on. 

The Soldier lets go of a breath he hadn’t realised he had held. Perched atop a building, he turns his Springfield Bolt-Action Rifle to the next building. The bottom floors are littered with people getting drunk, the dames wearing what appeared to be close to nothing. There can be electric type noises playing, people laughing at whatever they had on their glowing screens, but it isn’t the Asset’s mission. 

The Asset focuses on the top floor of the building. Barton is searching through the apartment, looking for something. He combs through the filth, routinely finding nothing. The Asset repositions the rifle, trying to find a space through the window that Barton hadn’t covered. 

The Asset senses something coming up the stairs, to the roof. The metal vibrates under it’s feet, and he almost swears. Barton is close by, and he has had a history with his mission. Rogers, Steve G. Instead, he settles for crouching down, pressed to the side of the wall. He removes his rifle, resting it upon the side of the wall as well. He would be safe as long as the sun did not shine upon him. (His left arm is still made of metal, bright silver metal, but the only visible parts are on his finger tips.)

He sits and waits, as the two drunk dames undress each other. He closes his eyes eventually and rests, and walks away hours later, the tips on the fingers of his left hand leaving a familiar gleam that Barton picks up on. 

-

It’s nightfall when Clint leaves the apartment. The mess of a shabby apartment has nothing of interest, and no one goes in all day, so Clint searches the place to no end. 

It proves to be no use, because dammit, all that’s there is shit that he has no use for. It’s during this time that he looks out the window, because to add to it, the club downstairs is going full blast and  _ how _ did they live like this on a daily basis.

A quick glint of metal catches his eye. It’s a quick sudden flash, yet it stands out as clear as day compared to the blackness of the night. It’s a quick beacon, but it's strangely familiar and Clint can't place where. He knows that he's seen it before, but where? 

He investigates the area against all better judgement. Using a stolen (and dying) flashlight that he finds in the shabby mess, he exits the building as a ghost. Entering the threshold of the other building, he finds the stairs and climbs. His footsteps echo in the dead silence of the building, but it's partially covered up by the noise of the music. 

The top of the building is clear; two people are fast asleep in the centre, collapsed onto the other. Snores were heard. So where had this ghost come from?

Only the walls could have given enough protection. Only by hiding behind the walls could have given enough support, to avoid being spotted. The face had been obscured by stray hairs; the person had appeared to be hand carrying a weapon.  _ And a silver hand _ . 

Nat was hearing about this.

-

“Nat, we need to talk.” He hits the call button again, but it redirects to VoiceMail yet again, and Clint’s getting worried, even if he knows that Nat can handle herself perfectly. 

He swears that the stranger on the roof is familiar. He just doesn't know where he's seen it, but he  _ knows  _ that the face is recognisable. 

Maybe if he headed out at seven in the morning, he would be able to catch Steve or Nat by the Avengers Tower at noon. 

Frank Clinton registers at a hotel at 3:45 AM in the morning, and doesn't leave till 7:00 AM the day after; paid with cash. 

-

**The Avengers: Boom or Bust?**

_ Written by Danny Rump (@DonaldRump) _

We all know the Avengers: Multi-Billionaire Tony Stark, and his team. A team of “enhanced” humans whose original purpose is to help humanity. 

But at what point do they become too popular? At why point do they do more harm than good and yet still claim to help us, the regular citizen?

We all saw the damage of Sokovia: the Scarlet Witch, a rogue witch who has too much power for her own good. A army of robots determined to destroy the earth. A god-like figure that does the same damn thing. 

It's one thing to have  _ one _ super soldier: but it’s not as simple as a Steve Rogers being created. It's aliens in New York, a witch who can manipulate reality, even two assassins that have a kill list so long that what's the point in hiding it?

SHIELD failed. It died, crashed and burned with the reveal of its long term corruption, and SHIELD willingly released all their archives onto the web. 

We know how powerful SHIELD was. But not a day goes by that I don't wonder: why doesn't the Avengers have limitations? Not even  _ just _ the Avengers, why doesn't every superhero have limitations? With all the damage they've caused to us in the long term, we need a safe guard. 

We need a constitution that guarantees our safety against these god-like heroes. We need to build a wall to protect ourselves against this. 

-

_ Margaret Carter has gotten worse: her body continues to deteriorate, and her memory as well. I am afraid that she will live for not much longer, she has been on the brinks of death for over a decade, on and off.  _

_ Be careful; she still believes that SHIELD is together, that HYDRA is de- _

A discarded note Peggy Carter’s doctor left, crumpled and torn apart as the doctor’s body falls onto the floor, caving into itself.

The man wearing a Iron Mask smiles, as he destroys the Medical Archives of Peggy Carter. Destroyed from the system, both physically and Electronically. 

(Although his wrist hurts from the exertion of it. He resolves to steal some Morphine.)

Crossbones smiles; the remains of SHIELD were being smashed to even more pieces.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is filler and it sucks, I'm so sorry.
> 
> (tumblr is barnsebucky)

**Author's Note:**

> Not entirely Age Of Ultron Compliant, but yeah. 
> 
> (my tumblr is barnsebucky if yall want to say hi or anything.)


End file.
